Nella Becker was visibly affected by the tragedy of the Titanic's sinking, said her relatives.
Nella Estella Elizabeth Becker was a passenger on Titanic.
Background[]
Nella Estella Elizabeth Baumgardner was born on June 19, 1876 in New Lexington, Perry, Ohio, USA. She was often named 'Nellie'. She was the first child of John Albert Baumgardner and Clara Fulton. Her father was a one of the earliest photographers in the Springfield area. She had 3 siblings: Edith Mae following her in 1878, with Ruth Adele being next in 1885. A brother appeared in 1887. His name was Fulton Albert.
As a young woman, Nellie entered Wittenberg’s two-year preparatory school and there met her husband, Allen Oliver Becker, whom she married in Springfield, Clark, Ohio, on September 20, 1898, two years after graduating from Wittenberg. He was in her same class in 1896. Becker was from Berrien Township, Berrien County, Michigan and served as a Lutheran interim pastor for the Eau Claire Community Congregational church in Michigan.
Together, the pair became missionaries and a few months later, they moved to Guntur, Andhra eastern India to settle in Guntur, Andhra Prasdesh. While in India, Nellie and Allen kept close connections with Wittenberg. They lived with other missionaries who were also Wittenberg alumni and the Beckers could still read The Wittenberger newspaper as its copies were sent to them from abroad.
Nellie Baumgardner as a young woman.
Nellie and Allen faced harsh conditions in India. They arrived in a time of terrible famine, extreme weather, and were located in an isolated area where it was almost impossible to keep in contact with friends and family in America. The most dire condition facing the Beckers, however, was the outbreak of cholera. The couple lived in India during the Sixth Cholera Pandemic, which took 800,000 lives in India alone. Allen wrote to The Wittenberger that he and Nellie were witnesses to many passing from cholera.
Their first child was Ruth Elizabeth, who made her mother in 1899. She wanted to be extra careful with her first child, as she was surrounded by cholera victims and fearful for the health of her newborn child. Nellie’s emotional state began to decline. Acquaintances of Nellie remember that during these five years, her nerves gradually gave way and affected her physical health, ultimately prompting the family to return to America for 15 months of rest in Lima, Ohio, where Nellie gave birth to her second child, Luther Allen, in 1905.
Once Nellie had recovered, the family returned to India. Their second term in India was dedicated to running a boys’ orphanage which trained children in skills such as weaving, carpentry, and printing. Their next child was Marion Louise, born on December 28 in 1907, in Secundarabad.
During the time that she still carried her daughter Marion, her son Luther, as well as Ruth and her husband, were all severely inflicted with illnesses. Although Ruth and Allen survived their infliction, two-year-old Luther died from tetanus. Their last son, Richard Fulton, joined the family in June 1910. He got infected too. For Nellie, this was it. She could not bear these hardships anymore and she had enough of her time abroad. In 1912, she decided that her three surviving off-spring would grow up in America from now on. The doctors had also advised this, if she wanted to see Richard get better.
A large voyage awaited them from India to England, on a ship. Allen was not with them. He still served his six-month term, doing his duty the best he could.
Titanic[]
Mrs. Becker was 35 years old at the time she boarded the Titanic as a Second Class passenger at Southampton on Wednesday 10th April 1912, with her children. Nellie was nervous to board the ship, having misfaith in its safety and it was not before she had seen the ship’s pursor, that her odd feelings and worries were taken away. Her foreboding was not wrong. It was after all a Maiden Voyage, something that had gone wrong for many ships. The mighty, grand luxury liner left port after noon to start her Maiden Voyage.
On the night of April 14, Titanic’s sleek, comfortable, Atlantic crossing came to premature end. It was a worst-case scenario, when the ship steamed at a speed close to her maximum capbilities and she was in an icefield with otherwise perfect weather conditions, which now proved to be her downfall, as the icebergs were not clearly visible with no moon and no breakings. It was 11:39 A.M. when one iceberg proved to be too close, when her looksouts saw it. The bridge answered their call and saw it too, while quickly turning the rudder to hard-to-starboard, to sway Titanic to port, while also ordering the Engine Room to reverse her engines. This all didn’t work out as planned. Titanic’s bow was spared from a frontal collsion but her starboard side still brushed against the iceberg below sea level, which caused small gapes to appear in her hull. Buckled steel plates allowed water in and quickly, the water rose on the lowest deck.
Nellie had slept through the collision. With the sudden stoppage of the engines, she got awake. When she got out of the cabin, a steward assured her that everything was fine and that she could return to her room. Soon after, another steward came with different news and directed Nellie and her three children to the upper deck, with no time for them to dress. Nellie did not grasp the fact that she was in danger while she waited in one of the Second Class lounges. They took ladders to get to the higher decks. A while later, as she witnessed the launch of rockets as distress signals and hearing the ship’s band play also got her thinking.
She felt the sharp cold on deck. Nellie thus sent Ruth back to their cabin to fetch blankets. Ruth did so, but some sailors were fast to grab the young ones to deliver them into lifeboat 11, which startled Nellie as she didn’t want to leave them alone, so she shrieked that the children were hers and demanded a place in the lifeboat for herself. By the time Ruth was back, her mother was in lifeboat 11 which was lowered. Nellie became very concerned to not have Ruth with her.
Nellie quickly called out to her to take the next lifeboat. Ruth did so, unbeknownst to her mother. She was in lifeboat 13, launched minutes later, after lifeboat 11 had rowed away. While in the lifeboat, Nellie was offered clothes from other passengers. Still, the cold was unbearable. In a 1912 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nellie admits that the worst of her Titanic experience was spent on the lifeboat. She still worried about her eldest daughter during the night, but Ruth did make it off the ship alive.
‘Nearer My God to Thee’ must have been played by the musicians, according to her interviews. She saw the deemed unsinkable liner go down before her eyes, taking many souls. She still remembered the shrieks of these poor human beings, meeting their end in the cold, dark ocean.
Allen’s absence turned out to be a blessing for the Becker family. Women and children were given priority for the life boats and only 13 males from Second Class survived, leaving 160 women from Second Class widowed. The death toll of Titanic was about 1503.
Nellie Becker and her children were all rescued by the RMS Carpathia at dawn, where lifeboats 11 and 13 arrived and soon were hauled up with her occupants, so Ruth also survived.
After the sinking[]
The mother must have been very happy to find Ruth back, as she had no idea whether she’d make it off the sinking vessel.
Nellie’s husband did not know about the welfare of his family before the Carpathia reached New York on April 18. An article in the Daily Eagle on April 17, 1912 announced: “Mrs. Allen Becker and three children are among the saved from the ill-fated Titanic.” Finally, on Saturday, April 20th it was reported that J. A. Baumgardner had received a telegram from his daughter Nellie at 11 P.M. on Thursday stating: “Arrived safely with children and am now on land.”
After the sinking she made a claim against the White Star Line for the loss of her possessions and all of their savings from over the year, that were all lost when Titanic sank: they included a number of rugs, paintings, furniture and books. She felt that a sum of $2184,20 would cover for it.
She and her children were soon in Wittenburg and Nellie gave the press an account of her feelings about the whole premise. There were two things that had scarred her worst during the tragedy, as Nellie stated in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She had a more horrible time in the lifeboat. The cold had taken too much of its toll despite other passengers offering her clothes. The other, even more severe part of her upset came from witnessing all those men that were left to the mercy of the sea, to struggle and cry out for help.
Nellie had sent her father John Baumgardner a telegram, to let him know she and her children were okay.
Later life[]
Family of Nellie later reported that Nellie’s nerves never recovered from this experience and that she would become emotionally overwhelmed whenever that ill-fated night was mentioned. She already had seen and endured lot of awful events taking place during her time in India, no less the loss of a son. The catastrophe with the Titanic dealt her another mental blow, even if she and her children made it out alive.
On April 22, they visited Allen's parents in Berrien Springs, Michigan, before staying with her grandfather, Henry Baumgardner, who lived in Berne township. They spent the summer at Henry's country house. A thrilling narrative was presented by Nellie Becker at a session of the Woman’s Missionary Society of the First English Lutheran Church in Lancaster as reported by the Daily Eagle on May 18, 1912.
Her husband joined them in 1913.
In the 1920s, they would live in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio. Ruth was out of the house and was a married teacher, living in Manhattan, Kansas.
In the 1940s, Nellie and Allen were residents of Princeton, Illinois. They continued to preserve their ties with Wittenberg. Allen became professor of missions at the Wittenberg Seminary, and often alluded to his wife’s experience in his lectures. Ruth went on to attend school in Wittenberg for two years and was a member of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority.
Her relationship with her two daughters, Ruth and Marion, turned sour over the years. It had gotten so bad, that Nellie was not apparent at Marion’s funeral when she died in 1944 and the contact with Ruth was also lost.
She became widowed after Allen’s death on March 19, 1956.
Nellie Becker died on February 15, 1961 at the Mercy hospital in Illnois at the age of 84. The cause of her death was a heart attack. She was 84 years old. She was laid to rest at the Oakland Cemetery in Princeton.
Ruth lived on to become one of the last living survivors of the sinking of the Titanic. Her relationship with her mother never recovered. She was even scrapped from Nellie’s testament, who left it in the hands of Richard, who was not good with money, while Ruth was still forced to oversee it.
She died in 1990 and requested her ashes be scattered at the site where the remnants of the Titanic were finally discovered.